South Texas sheriff unaccustomed to challenges threatens reporter

Published 7:00 pm, Wednesday, March 12, 2008

For 20 years, Duval County Sheriff Santiago Barrera Jr. did what he pleased with no challenges to his reign.

He decided who sat in his jail and when they were released. Sometimes it was before a judge got involved and other times it was after.

He didn't appreciate competition from the ranks. Barrera had the commander of a tri-county drug task force demoted last year after the commander announced he was running against Barrera for sheriff of the southern Texas county of about 12,000.

"I brought the Sheriff's Department from nothing to what it is right now," he said.

So no one took it lightly when the 67-year-old Barrera said Jan. 29 that he would lock up local reporters if they kept "interfering" in his business.

Barrera lost his re-election bid this month, but will have nine more months in office to make good on his threat.

Barrera is accustomed to things being done his way in a part of Texas where elected officials don't easily fade into the woodwork.

It was less than 10 miles away where Alice Mayor Grace Saenz-Lopez told neighbors last summer the Shih Tzu she was dogsitting had died when, in fact, she was keeping it for herself. Saenz-Lopez later resigned.

One of Barrera's predecessors as Duval County sheriff, George Parr, is widely believed to have been behind the stuffed ballot box in neighboring Jim Wells County that swung a tight U.S. Senate race to Lyndon Johnson in 1948.

Even Barrera's threat to reporters was mild compared to the actions of a Jim Wells deputy sheriff who shot and killed radio reporter W.H. "Bill" Mason in 1949.

For Barrera's part, he released a 65-year-old man after he was arraigned on nine counts of child sex abuse in January 2006. The judge had set bail at $875,000, but Barrera told the man to go home because he was diabetic and needed treatment the jail couldn't accommodate.

"He's out on my own authority, but I told him he's on house arrest," Barrera told The Freer Press at the time.

Last December, he arranged for Romeo Ramirez to be demoted as commander of the drug task force to patrol officer. Ramirez told The Freer Press that Barrera was "letting people down" by saying fighting drugs was his top priority and then booting the task force's commander.

Ramirez won the March 4 primary, but Barrera claimed mail-in ballots had irregularities. So far, only one incorrectly addressed ballot has been brought to the district attorney. The county's elections administrator said she has not received any formal complaints about the sheriff's race.

"In my books, he was out when he announced he was going to run," Barrera said. "The sheriff can't have anybody stabbing him in the back."

But the insult paled against a newspaper report that San Diego police had arrested Barrera's 42-year-old son, Miguel, on charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest on Jan. 4.

Alice Echo-News Journal reporter Christopher Maher, while working on another story two weeks later, identified himself to Barrera as the person who had written the story about Miguel Barrera.

"If you guys keep interfering with my business, I'm going to have you arrested," Barrera said, according to reports in the Alice Echo-News Journal.

When Maher asked Barrera to explain how reporters were interfering, Barrera said, "It's on the front page of the paper every day."

Nicole Perez, managing editor of The Freer Press and the Echo-News Journal, notified Duval County Attorney Ricardo Carrillo of the exchange.

"I am bringing these remarks to your attention in the hope that they will remain as such, just remarks," Perez wrote two days later. "However, considering the volatile political atmosphere in Duval County I have no doubt that Sheriff Barrera would carry out such a threat."

Barrera later acknowledged to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that he made the threat. But he told The Associated Press on Tuesday his remarks were directed at Maher, who wanted access that day to the county jail to cover an incident where two inmates had barricaded themselves inside and were flooding it.

Barrera said the front-page story about his son's arrest upset him. "To me that was bad," the sheriff said. "Of course, what can you do to them?"

A rocky relationship between politicians unaccustomed to media criticism and an aggressive newspaper is not unusual.

Perez received anonymous threats after she endorsed candidates in Jim Wells County races. She avoided making endorsements in Barrera's Duval County. "Too scary," she said.

Carrillo, the county attorney, said he was waiting to interview Maher before deciding whether to pass Barrera's comments along to the district attorney. As of last Friday, he had not yet spoken with Barrera.

Asked how Barrera managed to stay in office for 20 years, Carrillo noted that despite the scandals, the sheriff managed to receive 47 percent of the vote in the primary.